Why Year-Round Heartworm Prevention is Best for Your Dog

Why Year-Round Heartworm Prevention is Best for Your Dog

Six months of Heartworm prevention (through the warm months) for dogs, used to bewhat most people did for their dogs here in Colorado. Recently, many factors have influenced achange in thinking about this procedure, necessitating more wide spread twelve month protocol.

Irregular WeatherFirst, it is becoming harder and harder to estimate when mosquito season is upon usevenin Colorado where seasons seem to come and go fairly regularly. Year-round preventionalso helps if you travel to other parts of the country; however irregularly that may be. Both canleave your pet vulnerable to transmission at times when you wouldn’t expect to have to give yourdog prevention.

Complicated to TreatThis leads us to the next issue- heartworms are sneaky. They have a complex lifecycleand pet-owners are usually not aware their pet has been infected until it is too late. Heartwormpreventatives actually kill certain stages of the baby worms before they can grow to adults.However, only the presence of an adult worm will cause a dog to test positive. It is actuallypossible for a dog to test negative and still be in the early stages of infection. Therefore, it isimportant to test every year and continue on the preventative again promptly.

Heartworms are Becoming More Resistant and More PrevalentNew studies show that, while 20 years ago one dose of preventative would have killed100% of the baby worms present, now it may take more than 1 dose to rid a dog of the infection.In the U.S., over 250,000 cases of Heartworm are reported every year. Remember, these are onlyreported cases and the actual number may be much higher.